Since its founding, Seabury has placed a large emphasis on community service, and this summer provided an opportunity for Seabury Students to intern at a local non-profit, allowing them to not only work toward their service requirement, but also to do a deep-dive into one of five local non-profits.
Junior Eva Farmer says that her experience at Shy 38, a nonprofit farm animal sanctuary right outside of Lawrence, was “A really cool summer camp opportunity where I got to hang out with younger kids and set up for camps and activities, and it seemed really cool to me. They had a goat that was blind. They had a bunch of geese that were malnutritioned and had weird wing stuff going on, and we kind of taught a lot of the kids to not just see animals as food.” When asked if she would recommend this experience, she says, “Oh totally, if you like animals and like nature and kind of [having] more of a leadership role. It’s amazing.”
This sentiment is echoed by sophomore Tessa Vancil, who says, “I definitely learned a lot about nonprofit organizations. But honestly, I think just having such a commitment to a nonprofit organization is such a great thing, just for your mental health; our world is so focused on paying jobs, so I think doing something for no pay and really making an impact on people [was] my favorite part about it.” Tessa worked at the Children’s Community Center: “I helped them sort out how they wanted to organize their new space and so that it would be most efficient. I also sat in on a couple of appointments with actual families, which [was] interesting,” she says. Freshman Vivie Smith worked at the local farmers market downtown, where she says she “Helped a lot with the kids’ activities and just a lot of stuff around the farmers market, and designed a poster for the market.” She adds that “Every morning, we would go around the market and do a Facebook Live so that people could watch from their homes and just see what’s at the market.” As a freshman, finding places to volunteer can be challenging. She finds the hours to be invaluable, even saying, “Yes, I would recommend the program because I got 49 hours from it, and that’s really good and will help me a lot throughout the year.”
Junior Shafeen Jahan also completed her internship at the Children’s Community Center, where she says she “Worked as a volunteer, just to help out, and I did [things like] sorting clothes and organizing things.” Several communities around town opened their doors to Seabury students, allowing students to choose organizations that spoke to them. Students applied to several organizations that they found interesting, and the non-profits then selected students they thought would be the best fit for them.
Vancil points out that while organizing clothes every week might not sound appealing to everyone, she says that “As someone who’s very type A, organizing is kind of fun to me, which some people would say it’s crazy, but I did get my first choice, which I’m glad about.”
Across town, Farmer was “Feeding a bunch of horses, and we got to make drawings of roosters and draw on rocks … It was a lot of fun nature related activities that I would have never thought to do without this experience.”
Junior Evie Goerdel completed her internship at Hidden Valley Farms, another outdoor-oriented organization, and says she would recommend the program to “Other Seabury students, especially if you like being outside and helping your community.” The students who completed an internship were able to hit Seabury’s 30 hour yearly service requirement and students say that the program was invaluable for getting their hours. The internship guarantees 40 hours, exceeding Seabury’s requirements. This means that completing the internship for three summers, a student could complete all of their high school community service hours. Goerdel said that she completed her hours over the summer by “Completing an hour and a half, two hours for two weeks, and then shortly after that, I started helping a lot with parking there … The camp … was two weeks, and that got me most of my hours, because it was almost every afternoon for two weeks, for [about] 45 minutes. And then I think I did a little bit of watering trees in the area to get to 40.”
Overall, the new summer service internships allow students to expand their horizons and get an in-depth look at a local organization, making the program an excellent addition to Seabury’s long list of summer activities!
